Civil Society

President Obama will leave office having failed to use the tools at his disposal to make significant progress on getting child soldiers off the battlefield. That’s the consensus among human rights groups who point to the fact that for six consecutive years, the Obama administration has subverted U.S. law requiring the president to sanction foreign governments that force children to fight.

At least 27 Afghan police cadets were killed in twin suicide bombings on a convoy of buses outside the capital, Kabul, on Thursday, officials said. Kabul Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said the police trainees were traveling on the outskirts of Kabul when a suicide bomber rammed the buses with his car. A second bomber exploded after police and local residents rushed to the scene.

Pakistan's Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether secret military tribunals set up in early 2015 to try civilians accused of terrorism have violated the constitutional rights of 12 people convicted by these courts.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are at record highs, according to a Pentagon report released Friday that paints a bleak picture of a country where the Taliban continues its resurgence and the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) continues to be uneven.

Militants attacked a remote guesthouse and killed nine Afghans working for a Czech charity on Tuesday, as a new report by Brown University warned that almost 100,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

Security Assistance Monitor published its first Country Profile analyzing U.S. security assistance to Yemen. South Sudanese rival factions signed a framework for future peace talks. Public demonstrations against corruption and insecurity continued across Mexico. The U.S. State Department welcomed the release of four Azerbaijani human rights activists. These stories and more in this weeks top security assistance news.

The Egyptian government denies carrying out airstrikes against militants in Libya, Mali has reportedly become the most dangerous country in the world for U.N. Peacekeepers, Mexican activists have threatened to bring the country to a standstll over the unsolved disappearance of dozens of students and the U.S. State Department urged the government of Azerbaijan to release human rights defenders held in pretrial detention. Read about these stories and more from this past week.